Thursday, May 28, 2009

As of today this blog will no longer have Google AdSense or any other advertising.

I only added it out of curiosity. I never really expected it to rake in the dough and it didn't - it only lasted as long as it did because I never got around to getting rid of it. I use FireFox at home with Ad Block - so I never even saw it usually.

They would doubtless argue the description. They are very careful to hide what they are really about on their website and the astro-turf carpet bomb linking that is the first several pages of Google results for them. Nowhere on their website soliciting women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy (No, I won't be linking to it.) are they upfront about the fact that despite claiming to be a one stop 'non-judgemental' resource of options they will never, under any circumstance refer women to an abortion provider. That they oppose all forms of birth-control. That they promote a guilt oriented post abortion 'counseling program' designed to make women regret that they had the choice to end a pregnancy.

They certainly won't reveal that Crisis Pregnancy Centers have been credibly accused of coercive practices, adoption irregularities, links to violent extremists (Gunman James Kopp was affiliated with a CPC and was investigated for attempting to coerce and take out of state a teenage girl.) and deliberately stringing vulnerable women along until their pregnancies reach an advanced stage where abortions would be dangerous.

I absolutely refuse to have my blog associated with such unethical people. Bye bye AdSense.

3 comments:

Just to be sure I understand, does "AdSense was referring my readers to the Calgary Crisis Pregnancy Center" mean that the AdSense engine can't tell the difference between real and phony medical care? It seems likely to me that the CPC folks deliberately set up their AdWords purchase to reach pro-choice sites. That would certainly be in character for them.

I suspect the Google system simply matches up words like gmail does - so my blog is based in 'Calgary', the post mentioned 'abortion' and a 'clinic' - and that was enough of a linkage of terms to cause the system to produce that ad. I've done posts on Afghanistan and seen recruitmant ads for the military - something that almost made me get around to cancelling adSense earlier. I've done posts on drug legalization and seen ads for drug treatment centers pop up.

If you have gmail check the advertising some time - you'll see it corresponds with the content of your emails which I find more creepy than useful.

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Cliff

My Political Compass reads -7.00 / -5.74 which means essentially a lefty libertarian. I've been a union activist and delegate, worked as a lobbyist in Ottawa and ran for office provincially in Alberta for the NDP. I've also worked as a journalist and editor and had fiction published.